Width of the walls has a in lore explanation, though of course we can't be sure if the developers were taking the lore into considaration while designing the castle. So this will be just a little circlejerk for those who read the books. Basically what happened is that Kaer Morhen was built in a "simplier" times. It is old even from Vesemir's (the oldest living Witcher) point of view. So the castle was built to withstand siege pracitces of that time. And because humans were just only starting to colonize the continent and were technologically less advanced there weren't siege engines strong enough yet to crumble these walls. Even if the walls itself are this thin. That is why in the books when humans progressed the castle fell to siege of peasants and mercenaries. Kaer Morhen is an analogy for the Witchers themselves. It was useful when it was in its prime, but now that civilization has bloomed it is a relict that lost most of its usefulness.
A lot of castles in my country (Spain) are built that way in the inside: One big, BIG room, and rooms on the second floor or on additional towers. I have been in some of them, and the internal structure of Kaer Morhen is very familiar to me. I am not saying that you are wrong, I am just saying that maybe it's different on different cultures.
Here, in France there were a few rooms, and they hadn't a single purpose but a lot. It was a room, then you put some tapestries to divide the space and you brought a table and it was a dining room
@@lucienmeunier2270 Absolutely. Nowdays we are used to fragment the space we live in, but it seems to me that many years ago, in many places, that would have been unnatural.
Was replaying The Witcher 3 recently and hey! The castles in Skellege are quite interesting. Not sure if you do these anymore but it'd be nice to see a review of those in the future.
Any security has layers, to make breaching it seem too difficult compared to potential payoff. The Onion Router (Tor) even takes the metaphor as its name.
I like how you explain what's historically wrong, but acknowledge the need for fantasy-passes when need be (like the camera getting stuck, or easier to navigate for players). Major props!
Sure others have pointed this out but; Unless i am miss-remebering something, Kaher Mohren was a keep that has been rebuilt and repaired numerous times. Meaning old parts itermingle with newer bult parts and hastily added repairs and fortifications. It was a "working" castle with an arcitechtural history, which is what i'm sure the deisgners tried to convey, a working castle with a history of owners and use. Nothing like the repaired and maintained trourist castles we see around the world today.
You know, CD Projekt Red are very open to the gamer community and have been having contact with youtubers (flying them to events and such), it might be worth a shot to get in contact with them. Who knows :D maybe you'll contribute to the best video game castle ever, being a reality :P
Imagine Shad helping them with new Witcher game. Not only Castles would've been perfect. Actually what I learned from Shad and what I also think he would do is - not to make perfect castle (or anything else in the game) just by blueprint. He know pretty good that perfect in terms of medieval things often means - everything had it's flaw. So he would help them to place there logical flaws instead of just some.
Or perhaps any of the castles in Skellige like Kaer Trolde, or Novigrad's walls (I know it's not a castle but a city, but still they're pretty good looking)
Yeah. Kaer Trolde is on top of a mountain with the only way in or out a narrow and steep passage connecting to a narrow bridge. If they made the half of bridge from the castle a drawbridge, its practically invulnerable. And the an Craites can just laugh at the poor sods on the other side.
Other cool fortfied places that exist in Skellige its obviously, kaer trolde, but a castle up in Rogne (where u pick up the ursine silver sword if i remember) , Kaerl Gelen and a place in the sea called Kaerl Almhult
Kaer Trolde is pretty much unbreakable (without powerful magic). Mountaintop fortress, surrounded by sea- access via narrow path (which goes through a tunnel), or a narrow stairway. Out of range of siege engines. Requires a naval blockage and land army to keep supplies/reinforcements out. Impossible to take by force. Impossible to take via starvation. The good news its built in the corner out the way. You could take the rest of Skellege, and leave Kaer Trolde alone.
Sultan suprisingly for video games witcher 3 is extremly authentic in terms of soldier armor like redanian and nilfgaard and temerian aswell though they are shown less times in the witcher 3! Its actually a pretty good representation of 15th century soldiers!
Nikita Paklin Yeah im just saying it would be fun to talk about! i know its not supposed to be realistic but hey! btw the soldiers have actualy pretty good fighting animations!
VIDEO IDEA! Definitions and explanations of all the rooms inside a castle! One of the hardest things in designing castles for my writing has been the interior. For instance, what was an undercroft used for? Where were garderobes normally placed? Stuff like that!
+Shadiversity Here's the thing: if you have inward-facing defenses on the walls, then the defenders on the next wall further up won't be able to shoot people standing there. That's why some castles don't have any kind of inward-facing defenses on their walls. When the enemy is about to breach one wall, you abandon it beforehand and move to the next one. Likely some castle builders simply saw no point in trying to defend a stretch of wall - if the bailey has already been breached.
Here's a thought about the lack of internal crenelations: In the event of a breach at the gate or a wall, and the enemy taking the bailey the attacker would most likely be able to eventually take the walls of said bailey anyway, as its defenders would be practically cut off from support, unable to count on meaningful reinforcements and supplies since the enemy controls the bailey. That force of defenders would be essentially lost even if thanks to the internal crenelations it would take the enemy longer and more men to subdue them. If the wall of the bailey is breached and there are no internal fortifications however, there is no reason to continue defending a lost position and any sane commander will order his forces to fall back to the second line of deference. The fact that the walls of the second bailey are always higher then the walls of the first one, and lack of internal fortifications puts the enemy occupying the first bailey at a disadvantage by denying him a fortified cover (apart from whatever structures are within the bailey itself). This lack of cover would make defense of the second wall and a possible counterattack much more easier. As for Finding internal Crenelations on the third wall - this is the final defense position if that fails there's only the keep itself left and if you have to fall back to the keep there's no way you will have any strength left for a counterattack.
A castle is built to location, all good castles use the environment as an additional layer of protection. There is no perfect castle because no two castles live in the same spot. If he had to build a castle on a perfectly flat plain versus a mountain, I'm sure his perfect castle for each location would look drastically different.
There are plenty of great examples where a castle has been built on a flat surface throughout history. If that is your location, I can conjecture some fortifications the castle may have... It would have a jagged star-like outer bulwark made of thick earth and stone almost like a hill rather than a wall. There would be no wall surface that faces perpendicular to a possible avenue of attack in this shape, and make an attack more difficult. It would have moats, maybe several, with drawbridges and gatehouses protecting key routes through the castle. Of course it would have turrets, firing slits, murder holes, interior walls and gatehouses, and all that other good stuff that nearly ever castle has. I would probably have a large garrison there as well, because it would really be a city in and of itself.
Some of the castles you've randomly shown throughout the video.. My god, they're magnificent! Their design, their impenetrability, their strategical locations.. I've officially fallen in love with castles, thank you!
7:20 You said there is no obvious way for people to defend the gate house but you can clearly see Holes in the walls near the ceiling I believe they are there for support frames to build a wooden floor on top which could have had a bunch of murder holes
Many of the inaccessible areas of Kaer Morhen are accessible at the beginning of the first Witcher game. They included a dungeon, storage, and laboratory areas (the grating that blocked you at 20:28 led to these) and a middle floor consisting of a long corridor with many rooms on either side (the locked door half-way up the tower led here seen at 20:05 ). I'm guessing that these areas were blocked off in W3 for three reasons: 1. It reduced level complexity, which always helps performance. 2. The areas weren't needed for exposition (although were presumably still accessible to the other characters, or else where was everyone sleeping) and 3. As you said, simpler is easier for players to navigate.
Great video! However, I have one criticism. Late Middle Age trebuchets were devastating to castle walls. Not only did the advancements of stability and heavier counterweights improve its power, but they were known to throw stone a half a kilometer away. In many cases they were just as good as early cannons. See references below. Again, great video! illumin.usc.edu/the-trebuchet/ medievallifestyle.com/siege-engines/trebuchet.html www.medievalchronicles.com/medieval-weapons/castle-siege-weapons/trebuchet-siege-weapon/
As a note on the "great hall": When Kear Morhen housed all the trainees for the school of the Wolf, the open design was intentional to serve as a training hall during the winter. This is never referenced in game but I can only assume CDProjekt Red took the layout from its description in the books
You are clearly mistaken Carsten. There are many real world examples that are mix of old and new styles. Especially those used intensively throughout the ages. Like Wawel Castle in Poland or Tower and Windor Castle in England.
yes i agree, in fact you would be hard pressed to fined a castle that is all in one style, however, what i am saying is that they had no qualms about altering the existing structure to keep it up to date with modern tactics and engineering because if you have one section of a castle that is not up to date, it will become a weak point and a target for attackers.
That is not necessarily the case. If you build an additional layer outside, it is for example usually sufficient if said outer layer can withstand the most current artillery, as the interior layers will be far less likely to be subject to artillery fire, as the new layer is in the line of fire, and it's unlikely that the artillery will be brought in between the two layers.
You mention how trebuchets and so on weren't as powerful and effective as people seem to think. How effective would they actually be then? Like, how much damage would a boulder flung by a trebuchet actually inflict on a proper wall?
"Warwolf" supposedly a very large trebuchet, was used to destroy a Scottish castle's gatehouse. I suspect they were used just as much as a way of shooting things over walls (burning sand, burning tar, sharp stakes) as they were to shoot *at* walls.
18:23 It's not really inaccurate to put giant empty halls in castles, many castles like Malbork (world's largest Gothic castle) had tonnes of those halls
@@YoshiTheyosh123 It's a bit amusing in the game when whats-his-face is supposed to be repairing a breach in the wall. I mean, Witchers are a bit stronger than your average guy but that's a job for a team.
The only Witcher caring about Kaer Morhen is really Vesemir , the rest are just telling to fuck off of there. And *spoilers* After Vesemir's death , Eskel just leaves saying "This castle stayed alive because of Vesemir , now without him , this place is impossible to live. I'm going down the valley to look for a new place for us." or something along the lines of that. And Lambert just leaves with Keira in tow.
Meticulations (is that how you write it?) could be a problem due to animation in game design issues. If you walked over them, it would give 2 options: a) He'd fall, which would be extremely annoying b) He'd walk over them, making animation look wonky and stupid. Though they could just place wooden floor to avoid the problem.
I was wondering about that myself. Why in real life no one is going try to walk over a hole in the ground, players in a game do it all the time. If it is possible to fall through it, no matter how difficult it is to do, someone will do it.
The machicolations were usually covered with wooden hatches. You don't want the enemies to hit you in the crotch through them when you're shooting people standing farther away. When someone is doing something funny under them, then you open one of the hatches and shoot through it. Always pick a different one; make them guess which.
Several points to make. 1 Dont assume the castle was built in one go in the same period. This is a several hundred year old castle that was extended attacked/ damaged repaired several times over the centuries in different styles and goals in mind. 2 You can cover the wall other ways than machicolation , the bastions battlements can serve the same purpose. 3 The thin walls I believe has the same purpose as the overly big rooms. They provide space to move around.
John Smith That wan't my point. My point is that when you build a game you make a decision to have towers. But you need more internal space in a tower for a game than you have in a real tower. So you make the walls thin. But you make the walls thin in every enclosed space even in inaccessible spaces because first easier to do uniformed stuff second you know that during development several times people we will say. "We need to open a new area here for a quest or to place stuff. So open this up." And you dont want to spend five days redoing the walls, you can just make a new entrance. Quite simply games, not unlike castles, are not built at once. They are built over a period of times. They are refactored several times. There are DLC being released etc. Any way I might be mistaken. It is a very good game but one cannot expect perfect reality from every aspect of the game. It is a fact in towers (in most buildings not just in castles) the walls are too thin.
Adam Koncz You misunderstood, they got it right in places where you would need the space so would expect t he walls to be thin but got it wrong in places where you dont need the space so would expect them to be thicker
John Smith "but got it wrong in places where you dont need the space so would expect them to be thicker" No they made thin in places where they needed the space. But they made thin everywhere. For this reason. First they expected that in new areas they might need the space. If you are a developer you would get "I need 2 new rooms in Kaer Morhen by tomorrow" in weekly basis. Second. It is better and easier to be consistent, then not. Even artistically If it is presented to me to make a decision whether to make all tower walls the same thickness or accessible ones thin and inaccessible ones thick I would probably pick the first option. It is not historically correct, but if you need to make a mistake than it is better to make the mistake consistently.
Adam Koncz you really dont understand, the tower walls are too thin, the walls to the keep are too thin the rest are the right thickness. Additionally they couldn't add new room to kaer morhen as it has appeared in previous titles so needs to look like it does in those, and in fact i t has fewer room than it does there. When i say the walls they need are the right thickness i mean the battlements, the walls you dont need and will never need no matter what comes out are the towers and they are too thin. I don't see how you can't understand this, please explain to me. You've said that it's being historically inconsitent and they are but you have ignored what i've said and just kept on thinking that the walls everywhere are too thin which isnt the case. Now for the third time the walls are of an aceptible thickness where you would expect them to have sacrificed for space and they are way too thin in places where you wouldve expected them to not care about that.
makeris32 No. It is in game mechanic. Geralt uses it because he is not traditionalist, but in books based upon games is cleary staded as they are not using bow.
They don't. Witchers do not use any ranged weapons. Geralt just listens to what Vesemir says. And Vesemir said: "Fu*k it, I won a crossbow in a card game, you should use it".
Remeber that Witchers do not use bows or crossbows (only Witcher that use crossbow is Geralt in third part of game and its realllllly small). Most important defence of Kaer Mohren was that is was WITCHERS CASTLE! It was supposed to get rid of enemies just by looking scary.
They probably would but given that they spent practically all of their time use sword it would explain the lack of inner defenses, once an enemy broke in then the witchers would fight with swords. Normally they won the only time they lost was because of being so heavily out numbered and black magic being used
Hi Shad, The "no internal battlements" has a rational component. If the enemy breaches the walls, they can't use your walls as cover, and you can fire on the from inside of the keep. Same reason, some castles had D shaped outer towers, with the back exposed to the keep. Also, don't discount pure height advantage. Even in modern battles with guns, it can be decisive, it certainly was in the American Civil War. In the gatehouse, there is a wooden frame. It can be argued that it was some building for defense, and shooting down on people. Also there are some ruined walkway, and archway looking things, so i think it's plausible that the gatehouse defenses were there at some point. You kind of mentioned that :) Lack of machicholactions: Well, lack of time, money, or both easily explains that :) Lack of murderholes: More of an oversight from the programmers i think, but you are basically right. Otherwise, good points, and great analysis.
Great vid. However, I'm no expert, but I think the reason some castles don't have inward facing battlements on the outer walls is so that defenders on the (usually higher up) inner walls can easily shoot enemies on the outer walls. It would be really annoying if you had inward facing battlements and when the enemy succeeded in taking them they were able to use them as cover and be on almost equal terms with the defenders of the inner walls, bare in mind the attackers will have superior numbers so this could be disastrous.
That doesn't really make sense. Why design a castle more vulnerable at first, so that you can more easily take it back later? Enemies would be just as open to attack in the courtyard as on battlement-less walls. Your strategy should be to get an early advantage and keep as many of your fighters alive as possible, not to leave them defenseless so that others can more easily kill their killers.
My guess is that both philosophies could work and may both have been used by people with different preferences. Your point is valid in many ways but I think there may be situations where not having inward facing battlements helps. Defender may expect to need to abandon the outer levels sometimes, perhaps because they no longer have enough men to man the outer perimeter (larger area) due to casualties/ illness. Perhaps they could buy time in a siege where the enemy spent weeks undermining part of the outer wall (to make a breach) and once they finished, the defenders could retreated to the inner wall without giving the enemy any battlements to use on the wall they captured. This is just off the top of my head, but I know from reading sources that sieges/ stormings often ended up with attackers capturing one layer and fortifying it without capturing the whole castle until later (if ever)
You could easily make the walls unreachable from the ground of the first two baileys and just set the stairs down on the third and the last one. So that the centre of the defence would be the only way of sending men up the walls.
An important consideration is that, castles aren't just designed around having the perfect defence. People have to be able to live in them and get around them easily as 99.999999% of the time the castle is not under siege. Also, consider that the enemy will get their men onto a captured/ breached wall even without stairs through using ladders or ropes. Basically, there's a time and a place (context) for everything
Dewi Bevan I can see where you're coming from, but people just don't plan in the way that you are thinking. If you are out-maned, the only way you are going to win is to force the enemy into small areas where you can take them out one-by-one, without being overwhelmed. Keeping them contained to a courtyard is your best bet to win the battle. Why abandon the initial wall when for a more more fortified one when you can just make the original one more fortified? If you expect to lose part of your defenses, it shouldn't be there in the first place. Besides, secondary battlements can be made high enough that they can shoot over the inner battlements of previous walls.
Hey Shad, awesome video, thank you so much for doing it. I like to however point out several things you might find interesting. In a design document CPDR say that although they based every single detail of the castle on real castles in Poland, they didn't want to make it too "invincible" since obviously in the past it was captured. Captured by a peasant mob at that. The best part of the defense was the fact that almost nobody knew how to find the castle, not the actual walls. In the first Witcher game, you actually get to see the upper floor of the keep and there are more rooms. (basically all of the shit that is in the main hall was moved down from those rooms when the ceiling collapsed). And one thing I love is that they do have murder holes in the keep I'll attach a link with a picture. Also it's worth noting that the internal layout of the keep does not match the internal one in both games. Very nice video again, congratulations and keep up the good work. Here's a pic of the armory on the upper floor as well as the main corridor i182.photobucket.com/albums/x262/r3vange/1_zpsziuwljbw.png i182.photobucket.com/albums/x262/r3vange/2_zps4zvte7n6.jpg
Every time I watch one of these vids, I just picture Shad walking around with a clipboard and leading the main cast of characters around the castle like a tour guide, while the characters are taking notes, making comments and sometimes getting pissed.
Shad, I must say, I love the enthusiasm with which you present alls your videos, but especially the castle reviews. One can really tell you love the subject (as do I) and have a deeper understanding of how medieval castles, weapons and battles worked! A huge thumbs up from my end of the world (where we have many castles - as a matter of fact I was just driving past one you used in the video on the way to my last archery vacation). Keep up the good work and maybe we can have a chat when I am back in OZ (or you are in Europe). All the best! Rainbow
Very curious about Novigrad. There are no port cullis or doors at the gates and the walls dont go all the way around. Would love to hear his opinion on this
As usual love these reviews and I can't wait for the next Castle review. I can just imagine how you'd rip apart some castles/fortified cities from various games, if nothing else seeing you destroy the design of Stormwind City would be amusing to watch since I can already guess at some of it's biggest issues.
I found Shad's one year ago and instantly subscribed and have been watching every video he has put out. Mr. Shad I adore your videos and your wealth of knowledge.
Actually some of the closed areas in Kaer Morhen from Witcher 3 are accesible in Witcher 1. Mostly upper floor, iirc and laboratory in basement. But on the other hand, in first Witcher there isn't this bedroom thingy on the right side of castle (this area with two balconies).
Thanks for Kaer Morhen and loving the series :) Would love to see you analysis some of the other castles / cities in the Witcher series, namely: Crow's Perch Novigrad Kaer Trolde Oxenfurt Vizima (Witcher 1)
Some, not all, but some of the flaws could be explained in the castle was built and added to over time and designed as a cohesive whole at one time. For instance the gate look like they had once had wooden hording based on the holes.
Hey Shad, love the castle analysis videos! I may suggest the castles/fortifications in the Assassin's Creed franchise, I would imagine getting a close look at the castle wouldn't be too much of a hassle because of the parkour element. Keep up the good work!
Awesome video, would love to see a kind-of drive-by architectural analysis of many of the other keeps in this game, not as thorough but pointing out the highs and lows of them. Would even love to see an analysis of some of the town layout and city defenses as well.
Shad, in the first place many many thanks for making this video bout Kaer Morhen, as a member of your channel I feel listen too. In my option, you made a very distinct line between History and fantasy. THIS channel is the place where Education & Entertainment co-operate, keep this magical formula up and never stop improving it! Thanks for the extra point on the gatehouse (missing doors and murder-holes or arrow gapes), one point where I was very disappointed at the game Dev in the exact same way as described in the video. Maybe the dev where just lacy like they where with the Machicolation.
The improper stone ceiling part is extremely common in games and it bugs me to no end. Once you know to look for it, you'll spot it everywhere. Another common thing are archways that are in a ruined state, impossibly still holding themselves up
To me, it seems like the gatehouse was supposed to have a second floor with a wooden ceiling at the very least. There are some remnants there, so i guess they would also have had murderholes in the floor.
There are remains of at least two floors. The top floor probably had a connection with external walls, but you cant't see the door because all of that segment is now a gaping hole.
Love your videos! Although, I am very surprised you haven't done a castle review of the Kaer Trolde citadel on Ard Skellig. Which is, by far, my favorite location in the entire game. Because not only can you explore much of the outside, but you can explore a good portion of the interior, too.
I think it may come from the first game, were there was the inner hall and part of the castle, and then they made more designs for the 3th game, were the budget was much higher, but for continually reasons the they decided not to change what was already there... just a guess. also, speaking of the previous games, there is a battle where a castle is taken at the beginning of witcher 2, I would really love to know if it was historical at all xd.
you are missing a couple of details when considering the defenses. This is not a castle for regular humans. At it's prime it would house a small army of witchers. The internal layout allows them to limit how many opponents they fight at a time and slaughter them. The double gate could be improved but once you consider that witchers can use bombs and their enemies can't it is a fire trap. enemy enters the gate, witcher throws a fire bomb and burns them alive.
Your knowledge when it comes to medieval construction is amazing, I love it. However, one thing I feel is being a bit disregarded here is that in the Witcher, magic plays a big factor. This would especially be the case firstly for the elves who originally built the place, as well as when the Witcher school took up residence as they had resident mages. Archery wasn't anywhere near as big a deal for Witchers because mages were able to provide ranged support of their own. They're through the first entrance gate? Time to turn the gatehouse into an inferno., because mages can cast through those portcullises and turn the area into a bloodbath. This may explain the lack of internal crenulation as well, since the walls themselves are meant to be abandoned so mages can continue raining magical artillery into the baileys without risk of collateral damage. The wall thickness is definitely an issue, but again, this is potentially explained by means of magic (and yeah, I know using magic as an excuse all the time is shitty, but in a fantasy setting like this, it is important). You want to blow up a wall? Enough mages and it'll be pretty much possible regardless of wall thickness. This means that the principle of design would need to be based around slowing an enemy down if they attempted a breach, rather than stopping them entirely, because attempting the latter is likely futile. If we were just looking at assaults using trebuchets and catapults, it'd be a real factor, but it's likely a magically inclined race wouldn't even bother with that. Why waste physical resources when you can just cast a few spells? Of course if anyone has any counter arguments, that's fantastic, I'd actually love to hear them, but the main point is magic just makes a lot of classic design elements almost unnecessary.
I love how I inquired Shad's opinion on Kaer Morhen a few days before this was published :D Man I laughed my ass off at the bits the devs of Witcher just seemed to forget - I never noticed the lack of arrow slits and murder holes. And the lack of meticulations (is that how you write it?) here and there is plain hilarious, considering they're elseplaces. You're doing awesome work Shad, thank you.
I absolutely loved this video, never thought someone could point out so much detail simply in the castle design of one game. Honestly despite it's flaws, this video has made me even more impressed with Kaer Morhen and the Witcher 3's world design in general. I don't claim to have any significant historical knowledge, but I do have two small idea's if anyone wants to humor me. 1) On the meticulations, is it possible the castle use to have meticulations all over but many of them could have been filled in at some point? Kaer Morhen is an extremely old castle that's been through at least two major battles up to the point of Witcher 3. Possibly some of the battlements which had meticulations were at risk of falling down from age/wear and tear and they blocked in the meticulations to try and make them more structurally stable? 2) On the size of the grand hall and it's wasted space. Theoretically if whoever payed to have Kaer Morhen built was rich enough, couldn't they have intentionally wanted a huge grand hall to be more impressive? Wastefulness is certainly another sign of wealth, maybe they wanted whoever entered the castle (invited) to be able to look around this massive room and see all of the murals at once?
Lothric Castle from DS3.... but yeah, the scale of Dark Souls castles is insane. They were built for giants with bigger egos.... and maybe that's why we find them all in ruin. Nothing to do with fading fire, everything to do with bad defenses?
Anor londo is technically speaking... a castle. and Gwynevere resides inside the keep. also Sen's Fortress is actually kinda of a huge gatehouse, designed by a madgod with a sense of humor, but a gatehouse nonetherless. everything else is the inner city
For those of you who haven't read Mr. Sapkowski's books....do it quickly. His descriptions of Kaer Morhen really help visualise the fortress and make one feel like he's there with the witchers, surviving the cold northern winter, swapping hunting stories and drinking mead.
I love your videos, just for starters, and I haven't actually finished this video yet, but I believe that the primary defense for Kaer Morhen was the nearly inaccessible location. I think you can only get there by following a small hidden trail and it would be nearly impossible to move any sizeable force within range to assault the actual castle itself. Unless you can teleport in haha.
iirc Kaer Morhen and Kaer Trolde were suggested already under the Skyhold and/or Whiterun videos :D i'd still like to see Kaer Trolde and maybe Novigrad
Kaer Trolde will probably be the best-reviewed one. Central keep located on an isolated, rocky outcropping with a winding mountain path leading to its gatehouse? Good luck besieging that monster.
Thanks for the analysis. I'd love to see you inside of a real and well designed castle if we can ever get enough Patreon support to send you to Europe or Israel.
I loved this video and how, even putting a lot of attention to detail, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Maybe on the Witcher 4? Thanks for sharing your knowedge and for teaching us to look from a different angle while enjoying these awesome fantasy universes :)
I think it's just a stereotype that you have to reach a compromise between these two things. Historically accurate stuff (buildings, weapons, armor, everything) looks far better to an educated eye than made up Holywood-inspired garbage. Practicality is what's actually beautiful.
I believed that this was summed up best in the book brisngr "adding that extra inch to the blade would make it less practical, you think it'd make it look better but i think it would make it look ugly."
Hey Shad, love the castle series! I was wondering if you could do something on the economic aspects of castles and other fortifications throughout history. Maybe with comparions to other types of fortifications that fulfill different functions to housing the ruling class in snug invulnerability?
You should do another Skyrim episode. This time with the Open Cities Skyrim mod, so that you can see both the inside and outside of the city simultaneously.
Mont-Saint-Michel is an abbey not a castle.But there's an outer wall with a double layer at its gate. It has been attacked by the bristish once in the 15/16th century (they used a primitive canon, you can see it in the entrance of the Mont), but the siege failed. So it"s more like an abbey with a basic but yet effective defense than a real castle (with a lord and an army inside).
Neuschwanstein is beautiful. And it's location seems very good aswell. There's a long path leading up to the hill it sits on. And I love the paintings inside on the walls, especially the one you can see on the picture in your video. It's a rather realistic painting of a forest (I think it was a hunting-scene if I'm not mistaken). You should visit it if you haven't already!
Been a long time since last I swung over your channel and I must say I love these two videos you've done on Skyhold (Of course you'd be playing an knife ear) and Kaer Morhen (Of course you'd go for the plate of the Griffin school). One thing I do want to say is that you did not mention what role would magic, a force present in both universes, would come to play into both these castles and their defenses. I, for one, can see Witchers in the inner courtyards simply casting Quen to defend against the arrows of their attackers and then just shooting back as they reload. And even that seems unlikely, as it is implied that the School of the Wolf focuses heavily on swordplay and rarely, if ever, employs crossbows or signs to begin with. Then again, you might be more interested in focusing on the more "real" side of these fictional castles. The good thing about the Kaer Morhen Valley is that it is littered with fortresses (pretty run down fortresses, sadly) such as the lookout tower and another keep in the same mountain. Maybe you could do a video on those? I personally am very interested in how mere peasants with pitchforks were able to slaughter a fortress full of Witchers. The story of Fyke Isle is very similar, yet I cannot seem to find any historical precedent (As far as Wikipedia is concerned) for such a successful peasant uprising. Then there's also Tesham Mutna in Toussaint, or Kaer Trolde in Skellige, both of which I believe would be extremely interesting to look at!
Here's my theory: There are 3 possible reasons for the castle walls being so thin: 1. It was a facade, with the lord either cheapening out ("oh, come on, nobody will know it's like that, and nobody uses thebuchets and catapults anymore, not when we're in _this_ possition!") 2. It was built in a hurry, before an attack (possibly having used wooden wals before), so it was incomplete. 3. It was an inside job. The people in charge of building it knew how paper-thin it is, but they wanted to take the castle themselves and/or have the lord die or something. The back of the walls could easily be filled with dirt packed down really well, eventually with cement water added every so often to turn the packed dirt into actual rocks, if they had the wealth and time to do so, or just build a moat-quarry, to both get stone for the walls and make a moat. So yeah, chances are it was an inside job that didn't end quite as planned...
Thank you very much for this video! It somehow reminded me of late castles and Japanese castle design. Could you please make a video on these topics as well? I'd love to hear it! BTW: I've heard that most churches were painted inside too, but today they are all gray. It's a real pity especially considering that we still have wall paintings surviving from the Roman Empire!
I think you can't apply the same standards to Kaer Morhen as to other castles in some areas, simply because it is not the residence of any lord with a family and servants and the like, but the headquarters of the witchers (or at least the Wolf School). Correct my if I'm wrong, I'm not familiar with the books, but I don't think the witchers ever had servants nor regularly entertained guest nor had the need for a formal dining room, so the Great Hall for example would be used in numerous ways by the witchers living there, maybe comparted into smaller areas. Great video considering everything else :)
It was originally built by the elves and I don't believe the elves would have built it specifically for the Witchers, they built it to be a castle for themselves. If, hypothetically, The Witcher universe was real, then it is likely the castle would be a lot more practical.
Bartosz N the school of the wolf trained witchers in the kaer morhen valley long before the fortress was around. theres a cave nearby with a wolfs head carved into the stone at the entrance where the first trials of the grasses were performed
I really hope you do the cities of Oblivion next. The cities of Oblivion are actually very well made. The Imperial city is in particular darn near impenetrable despite being able to approach the main wall from any angle. Though there's one missed opportunity I just know you'll hammer on :P
ActionCow Oh certainly not that cold. And I would certainly not try to move a siege tower or ram or catapult across it if it did freeze in a peculiarly cold winter. Incidentally, if the design was fully realized, the city would be ridiculous to try and take as there are a number of gates along the bridge. And if the design seen in the intro vid was realized...goodness, SEVEN gates to breech on the bridge before you even reach the island to start properly assaulting the city
Sorry to disappoint, but if Imperial City would exist in real world, it could have been taken without so much as breaking a sweat. If you watch more videos on proper castle design you'll see that IC breaks almost all of them, just having three layers of walls is not even close to proper security. Same goes from every city in Oblivion and Skyrim: no farmlands to sustain siege, no gatehouses with proper murderholes, no twisted road for the attackers, no drawbridges, etc. And if you add the fact that this is fantasy we're talking about and people have magic to help them defend we should be seeing a lot of creative uses of it, but we never do. Nontheless the best design in a game would go to La Valette Castle from Witcher II or Novigrad. However I would like to see a game where a city is protected by magic as well as historical methods.
Zygmunt Ledzion What makes the IC almost impossible to take is that if the design was full realized - and that's important cause the game model is not - you have to take numerous gates on the main bridge to get to the island and that would be a huge pain. And the walls are extremely high and appear to be solid stone which means you are going to have one heck of a time breaching it. The lack of farm land is a limitation of the game engine at the time, that many NPCs, folliage meshes, and LOD would have been an unsustainable strain. The biggest violation of security design in the IC is actually one you completely failed to mention: the number of interior gates. Every district being gated and isolated is good. Every district having a gate to the center is not good. Ideally, the IC should have only one gate to the center and you should be forced to take all the districts to reach it. And the Imperial Prison and Arcane University both serve as supporting fortresses. Also, the gatehouse bit is impossible to judge since the game uses loading transitions. However, some do look like gatehouses. And to go back to the farmland bit, just to further prove my point the area surrounding the lake the Imperial Isle is situated in is constantly referred to as farmland. So again, the depiction is a matter of game engine limitations. If the IC's design were fully realized as described, it would be a very, very tough nut to crack.
I think it is quite possible to explain most of what you are saying. The castle has been demolished by a siege and never repaired correctly due to lack of resources, both material and human. Since inner gates were probably demolished during the siege and repaired probably by returning witchers only, they might not have been able to build good matriculations (is this the right word?) above the new gates. Other matriculations might have been covered during some energency low cost reconstruction (I assume such "hole in the wall" doesn´t help the strength of it). Also they were lacking enough people to defend walls after the break-through, so maybe they decided for the strategy "once there is a break-through, we all go into more inner layer" and therefore they wanted to be able to shoot at everybody, therefore there are no inner battlements. Note inner layers are above outer ones, so it makes sense you want there no cover. Note also these walls are really not in a good shape. Maybe they just decided to repair outer battlements only? Also doors to the second floor in the main gate might have been lost during some emergency repaires after the destruction of this floor. The main hall might have another wooden floor, too, and I assume there used to be more rooms, but with only a few witchers living in, they probably decided to just remove those walls when they were about to fall. Possibly modular design was original intention as the original architect wasn´t sure about specifics of a witchers keep. And thin walls... might have been magically strenghtened, or the original project was simply too ambitious? It really looks way too big for a keep of some order in the wilderness. They might have started building a huge castle then money became problem, so they decided to build it cheeply... also they might expect to be able to destroy enemy trebuchets by their own, given the height advantage. And generally, we should not assume that everything worked well during middle age or fantasy with this technological level. Maybe stupidity arised, one group of workers didn´t communicate with others and generally they just made a crap.
Well I remember in the first witcher game there was this room with weapon raks and chests, there were also a pait of kettle and there were two slits on the ground right near them to spill boiling oild through, and because of that I always thought I was in the gate house except no because im still in the keep.The game called that room the armoury if I remember correctly.
Can you do an episode on the Alamo, and how it was so flawed in its design. In U.S. History they never go over the details of the fortress, just that it was easily taken over by both sides, and the battle that took place there . I've always been curious of how a stronghold could be so bad at its job. I know it's way more modern that your usual 15th-16th era castles that you normally do, but I think it would make a nice "break from the usual" type episode. Normally you give critiques on castles in games, or in the real world, but those are usually well designed/fortified. The Alamo was laughable, and I would love to have a laugh about it with you.
" In U.S. History they never go over the details of the fortress" because it's irrelevant. It's not even a significant event in U.S. history. If it had never happened, history would be pretty much the same, except without Texans worshiping some guy wearing a dead raccoon on his head. It's just another one of those little things blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes.
"It's not even a significant event in U.S. history." It is a significant event in in Texas' path for independence which later lead it to becoming apart of the U.S. so you are wrong. "If it had never happened, history would be pretty much the same, except without Texans worshiping some guy wearing a dead raccoon on his head." well since Texans don't worship Davy Crockett now you are wrong again. "It's just another one of those little things blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes." I dont really see how its blown out of proportion or how it contributes to any sort of propaganda.
Kaer Morhen's gatehouse does have a series of covered up somethings (the brickwork looks like it's covering a hole in the wall) all through it which look like they were for murder holes or arrow slits. They were probably just fixed up to avoid causing structural problems in a collapsing castle, or were edited out to save on development time. Either or I guess.
![Eminem - Houdini [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/22tVWwmTie8/mqdefault.jpg)
Width of the walls has a in lore explanation, though of course we can't be sure if the developers were taking the lore into considaration while designing the castle. So this will be just a little circlejerk for those who read the books.
Basically what happened is that Kaer Morhen was built in a "simplier" times. It is old even from Vesemir's (the oldest living Witcher) point of view. So the castle was built to withstand siege pracitces of that time. And because humans were just only starting to colonize the continent and were technologically less advanced there weren't siege engines strong enough yet to crumble these walls. Even if the walls itself are this thin. That is why in the books when humans progressed the castle fell to siege of peasants and mercenaries. Kaer Morhen is an analogy for the Witchers themselves. It was useful when it was in its prime, but now that civilization has bloomed it is a relict that lost most of its usefulness.
Mages helped too... and without them the Keep wouldnt have fallen iirc
that's quite a beautiful analogy my friend
Well and fucking Chimera (or Frightener or how is that thing called in english) helped a lot too
You are talking about a different event from Witcher 1. I was reffering to an event that happened in the books long before Witcher 1.
+Dank Skulls Then you should read the books ;)
your channel is basically the essence of what's greatest about the internet: education through entertainment
Agreed
Hey, I want a heart too!
Straw for this man stat.
Just messing ;0)
KappaKappaLUL forsenE it's entertaining to people who aren't morons
***** it is legit because your an ignorant fool
A lot of castles in my country (Spain) are built that way in the inside: One big, BIG room, and rooms on the second floor or on additional towers. I have been in some of them, and the internal structure of Kaer Morhen is very familiar to me.
I am not saying that you are wrong, I am just saying that maybe it's different on different cultures.
Here, in France there were a few rooms, and they hadn't a single purpose but a lot. It was a room, then you put some tapestries to divide the space and you brought a table and it was a dining room
@@lucienmeunier2270 Absolutely. Nowdays we are used to fragment the space we live in, but it seems to me that many years ago, in many places, that would have been unnatural.
Was replaying The Witcher 3 recently and hey! The castles in Skellege are quite interesting.
Not sure if you do these anymore but it'd be nice to see a review of those in the future.
Castles are like onions (much like ogres) they have layers.
you know not everyone likes unions. cake! every one likes cake, Cake has layers.
the cake is a lie
the internet Ogres?
Parfaits! Have you ever met a person, you say, "Let's get some parfait," they say,
"Hell no, I don't like no parfait."? Parfaits are delicious!
Any security has layers, to make breaching it seem too difficult compared to potential payoff. The Onion Router (Tor) even takes the metaphor as its name.
I like how you explain what's historically wrong, but acknowledge the need for fantasy-passes when need be (like the camera getting stuck, or easier to navigate for players). Major props!
Agreed. So pleasant to see.
Sure others have pointed this out but; Unless i am miss-remebering something, Kaher Mohren was a keep that has been rebuilt and repaired numerous times. Meaning old parts itermingle with newer bult parts and hastily added repairs and fortifications. It was a "working" castle with an arcitechtural history, which is what i'm sure the deisgners tried to convey, a working castle with a history of owners and use. Nothing like the repaired and maintained trourist castles we see around the world today.
You know, CD Projekt Red are very open to the gamer community and have been having contact with youtubers (flying them to events and such), it might be worth a shot to get in contact with them. Who knows :D maybe you'll contribute to the best video game castle ever, being a reality :P
Imagine Shad helping them with new Witcher game. Not only Castles would've been perfect. Actually what I learned from Shad and what I also think he would do is - not to make perfect castle (or anything else in the game) just by blueprint. He know pretty good that perfect in terms of medieval things often means - everything had it's flaw. So he would help them to place there logical flaws instead of just some.
I imagined an easter egg character screaming MACHICOLATIOOOOOONNS
@@TBStudios91 or a some casual witcher saying "But what about dragons?! Dragons have feelings too, people!"
Aged like fine milk
@@Himmyjewett They were so open to the community that they were not ashamed of pure lying to all of them about 4 years of game production
How about an analysis on the Bloody Barons keep?
As an example of smaller and more improvised defences that it has?
Or perhaps any of the castles in Skellige like Kaer Trolde, or Novigrad's walls (I know it's not a castle but a city, but still they're pretty good looking)
Aaron Brougham kaer trolde is hella well defended
Yeah. Kaer Trolde is on top of a mountain with the only way in or out a narrow and steep passage connecting to a narrow bridge.
If they made the half of bridge from the castle a drawbridge, its practically invulnerable. And the an Craites can just laugh at the poor sods on the other side.
Other cool fortfied places that exist in Skellige its obviously, kaer trolde, but a castle up in Rogne (where u pick up the ursine silver sword if i remember) , Kaerl Gelen and a place in the sea called Kaerl Almhult
Kaer Trolde is pretty much unbreakable (without powerful magic). Mountaintop fortress, surrounded by sea- access via narrow path (which goes through a tunnel), or a narrow stairway.
Out of range of siege engines. Requires a naval blockage and land army to keep supplies/reinforcements out.
Impossible to take by force.
Impossible to take via starvation.
The good news its built in the corner out the way. You could take the rest of Skellege, and leave Kaer Trolde alone.
do a witcher 3 overview of realism in general soldiers,armor,fighting and so on!!!
This.
Cannot agree more; I'd love to especially see some reviews of Nilfgaardian and Redanian armor.
Sultan suprisingly for video games witcher 3 is extremly authentic in terms of soldier armor like redanian and nilfgaard and temerian aswell though they are shown less times in the witcher 3! Its actually a pretty good representation of 15th century soldiers!
***** yes i agree!
Realism in fighting in Witcher 3? Do you really think it's necessary?
Nikita Paklin Yeah im just saying it would be fun to talk about! i know its not supposed to be realistic but hey! btw the soldiers have actualy pretty good fighting animations!
VIDEO IDEA!
Definitions and explanations of all the rooms inside a castle!
One of the hardest things in designing castles for my writing has been the interior. For instance, what was an undercroft used for? Where were garderobes normally placed? Stuff like that!
This is exactly what the castle I am modelling in sketchup is going to be used for, but I need to finish it and it's a BIG job.
+Shadiversity Here's the thing: if you have inward-facing defenses on the walls, then the defenders on the next wall further up won't be able to shoot people standing there. That's why some castles don't have any kind of inward-facing defenses on their walls. When the enemy is about to breach one wall, you abandon it beforehand and move to the next one. Likely some castle builders simply saw no point in trying to defend a stretch of wall - if the bailey has already been breached.
Is there any chance you could do other castles in the Witcher 3, like Crows Perch or Kaer Trolde ?
royal palace in vizima
Drew Q)! Yeah kaer trolde is awsome
Well, Crow's Perch is not much of a castle, really. More like a small fortified villa.
kaer trolde would be awesome
Crows perch is the shitest castle I've ever seen
Here's a thought about the lack of internal crenelations:
In the event of a breach at the gate or a wall, and the enemy taking the bailey the attacker would most likely be able to eventually take the walls of said bailey anyway, as its defenders would be practically cut off from support, unable to count on meaningful reinforcements and supplies since the enemy controls the bailey.
That force of defenders would be essentially lost even if thanks to the internal crenelations it would take the enemy longer and more men to subdue them.
If the wall of the bailey is breached and there are no internal fortifications however, there is no reason to continue defending a lost position and any sane commander will order his forces to fall back to the second line of deference.
The fact that the walls of the second bailey are always higher then the walls of the first one, and lack of internal fortifications puts the enemy occupying the first bailey at a disadvantage by denying him a fortified cover (apart from whatever structures are within the bailey itself).
This lack of cover would make defense of the second wall and a possible counterattack much more easier. As for Finding internal Crenelations on the third wall - this is the final defense position if that fails there's only the keep itself left and if you have to fall back to the keep there's no way you will have any strength left for a counterattack.
That's actually precisely what happens at one point.
Shad should create blueprints to the perfect castle.
im pretty sure he did something like that already
he didnt actuly
A castle is built to location, all good castles use the environment as an additional layer of protection. There is no perfect castle because no two castles live in the same spot.
If he had to build a castle on a perfectly flat plain versus a mountain, I'm sure his perfect castle for each location would look drastically different.
There are plenty of great examples where a castle has been built on a flat surface throughout history. If that is your location, I can conjecture some fortifications the castle may have...
It would have a jagged star-like outer bulwark made of thick earth and stone almost like a hill rather than a wall. There would be no wall surface that faces perpendicular to a possible avenue of attack in this shape, and make an attack more difficult. It would have moats, maybe several, with drawbridges and gatehouses protecting key routes through the castle. Of course it would have turrets, firing slits, murder holes, interior walls and gatehouses, and all that other good stuff that nearly ever castle has. I would probably have a large garrison there as well, because it would really be a city in and of itself.
Some of the castles you've randomly shown throughout the video.. My god, they're magnificent! Their design, their impenetrability, their strategical locations.. I've officially fallen in love with castles, thank you!
7:20
You said there is no obvious way for people to defend the gate house
but you can clearly see Holes in the walls near the ceiling
I believe they are there for support frames to build a wooden floor on top which could have had a bunch of murder holes
Many of the inaccessible areas of Kaer Morhen are accessible at the beginning of the first Witcher game. They included a dungeon, storage, and laboratory areas (the grating that blocked you at 20:28 led to these) and a middle floor consisting of a long corridor with many rooms on either side (the locked door half-way up the tower led here seen at 20:05 ). I'm guessing that these areas were blocked off in W3 for three reasons: 1. It reduced level complexity, which always helps performance. 2. The areas weren't needed for exposition (although were presumably still accessible to the other characters, or else where was everyone sleeping) and 3. As you said, simpler is easier for players to navigate.
Great video! However, I have one criticism. Late Middle Age trebuchets were devastating to castle walls. Not only did the advancements of stability and heavier counterweights improve its power, but they were known to throw stone a half a kilometer away. In many cases they were just as good as early cannons. See references below. Again, great video!
illumin.usc.edu/the-trebuchet/
medievallifestyle.com/siege-engines/trebuchet.html
www.medievalchronicles.com/medieval-weapons/castle-siege-weapons/trebuchet-siege-weapon/
@@brianthomas2014 I sadly don't have time to check the sources you posted, but didn't early cannons also have trouble in penetrating castle walls?
Yea, I missed those areas and the armory
I had to make a quest active myself just to navigate out of the castle.
I think a castle full of witchers is enough of a barrier to prevent people from attacking.
Well evidently not as it was stormed and destroyed by an angry mob.
true daddy
Black magic was involved, had it not the witchers would've been able to hold the keep
Well, the castle tends to be woefully understaffed as well, which means mounting an effective defense isn't that easy...
though, in a previous video, shad mentions as paltry group of 8 or so folks defending themselves from hundreds.
Nice analysis! You could have looked at witcher 1 too though, where you can access the basement and the additional upper floor rooms of Kaer Morhem.
As a note on the "great hall": When Kear Morhen housed all the trainees for the school of the Wolf, the open design was intentional to serve as a training hall during the winter. This is never referenced in game but I can only assume CDProjekt Red took the layout from its description in the books
If you were given a castle cake on your birthday, would you look for flaws in its defences before laying siege and eating it?
with the conclusion that its biggest flaw is that . . . it's made of cake! Num num num!
God we can only hope so
Couldn't some parts of Kaer Morhen be older than the rest of it?
Most likely. Yes.
yes that is clearly the case but in the case of a real castle, they would keep the entire castle to a consistent level of defense
You are clearly mistaken Carsten. There are many real world examples that are mix of old and new styles. Especially those used intensively throughout the ages. Like Wawel Castle in Poland or Tower and Windor Castle in England.
yes i agree, in fact you would be hard pressed to fined a castle that is all in one style, however, what i am saying is that they had no qualms about altering the existing structure to keep it up to date with modern tactics and engineering because if you have one section of a castle that is not up to date, it will become a weak point and a target for attackers.
That is not necessarily the case. If you build an additional layer outside, it is for example usually sufficient if said outer layer can withstand the most current artillery, as the interior layers will be far less likely to be subject to artillery fire, as the new layer is in the line of fire, and it's unlikely that the artillery will be brought in between the two layers.
You mention how trebuchets and so on weren't as powerful and effective as people seem to think. How effective would they actually be then? Like, how much damage would a boulder flung by a trebuchet actually inflict on a proper wall?
This I am trying to do more research to find out.
Shadiversity Alright. Feel free to send me a reply here if you find out :D
"Warwolf" supposedly a very large trebuchet, was used to destroy a Scottish castle's gatehouse.
I suspect they were used just as much as a way of shooting things over walls (burning sand, burning tar, sharp stakes) as they were to shoot *at* walls.
It can launch 90kg stone 300m away
I calculated an average value of 900 hit points on an "proper wall" object.
18:23 It's not really inaccurate to put giant empty halls in castles, many castles like Malbork (world's largest Gothic castle) had tonnes of those halls
there was a second floor in gatehouse but was only in 1st game
And if you look close you can actually see the second floor collapsed. Well, it's the witcher's fault. Should've repaired that castle, mates!
here's the thing, for all witchers care, they might as well not have walls.
It's pretty hard to take care of an entire castle when you've got 3 people. And most of them only spend a short part of the year there.
@@YoshiTheyosh123 It's a bit amusing in the game when whats-his-face is supposed to be repairing a breach in the wall. I mean, Witchers are a bit stronger than your average guy but that's a job for a team.
The only Witcher caring about Kaer Morhen is really Vesemir , the rest are just telling to fuck off of there. And *spoilers*
After Vesemir's death , Eskel just leaves saying "This castle stayed alive because of Vesemir , now without him , this place is impossible to live. I'm going down the valley to look for a new place for us." or something along the lines of that. And Lambert just leaves with Keira in tow.
Meticulations (is that how you write it?) could be a problem due to animation in game design issues. If you walked over them, it would give 2 options:
a) He'd fall, which would be extremely annoying
b) He'd walk over them, making animation look wonky and stupid.
Though they could just place wooden floor to avoid the problem.
I was wondering about that myself. Why in real life no one is going try to walk over a hole in the ground, players in a game do it all the time. If it is possible to fall through it, no matter how difficult it is to do, someone will do it.
The machicolations were usually covered with wooden hatches. You don't want the enemies to hit you in the crotch through them when you're shooting people standing farther away. When someone is doing something funny under them, then you open one of the hatches and shoot through it. Always pick a different one; make them guess which.
who needs arrow slits and murder holes when you can set people on fire with a flick of your fingers.
Because you might still need line of sight to do that?
false when you have two sexual interests in a couple mages.
Several points to make.
1 Dont assume the castle was built in one go in the same period. This is a several hundred year old castle that was extended attacked/ damaged repaired several times over the centuries in different styles and goals in mind.
2 You can cover the wall other ways than machicolation , the bastions battlements can serve the same purpose.
3 The thin walls I believe has the same purpose as the overly big rooms. They provide space to move around.
I agree with everything apart from the last one as the thin walls are in places you cant go and the thick walls are in places you can
John Smith That wan't my point. My point is that when you build a game you make a decision to have towers. But you need more internal space in a tower for a game than you have in a real tower. So you make the walls thin. But you make the walls thin in every enclosed space even in inaccessible spaces because first easier to do uniformed stuff second you know that during development several times people we will say. "We need to open a new area here for a quest or to place stuff. So open this up." And you dont want to spend five days redoing the walls, you can just make a new entrance.
Quite simply games, not unlike castles, are not built at once. They are built over a period of times. They are refactored several times. There are DLC being released etc.
Any way I might be mistaken. It is a very good game but one cannot expect perfect reality from every aspect of the game.
It is a fact in towers (in most buildings not just in castles) the walls are too thin.
Adam Koncz You misunderstood, they got it right in places where you would need the space so would expect t he walls to be thin but got it wrong in places where you dont need the space so would expect them to be thicker
John Smith "but got it wrong in places where you dont need the space so would expect them to be thicker"
No they made thin in places where they needed the space. But they made thin everywhere. For this reason.
First they expected that in new areas they might need the space. If you are a developer you would get "I need 2 new rooms in Kaer Morhen by tomorrow" in weekly basis.
Second. It is better and easier to be consistent, then not.
Even artistically If it is presented to me to make a decision whether to make all tower walls the same thickness or accessible ones thin and inaccessible ones thick I would probably pick the first option.
It is not historically correct, but if you need to make a mistake than it is better to make the mistake consistently.
Adam Koncz
you really dont understand, the tower walls are too thin, the walls to the keep are too thin the rest are the right thickness. Additionally they couldn't add new room to kaer morhen as it has appeared in previous titles so needs to look like it does in those, and in fact i t has fewer room than it does there.
When i say the walls they need are the right thickness i mean the battlements, the walls you dont need and will never need no matter what comes out are the towers and they are too thin. I don't see how you can't understand this, please explain to me. You've said that it's being historically inconsitent and they are but you have ignored what i've said and just kept on thinking that the walls everywhere are too thin which isnt the case.
Now for the third time the walls are of an aceptible thickness where you would expect them to have sacrificed for space and they are way too thin in places where you wouldve expected them to not care about that.
Gatehouse is flawed because Witcher does not use bows XD
But they use crossbows.
makeris32 No. It is in game mechanic. Geralt uses it because he is not traditionalist, but in books based upon games is cleary staded as they are not using bow.
They don't. Witchers do not use any ranged weapons. Geralt just listens to what Vesemir says. And Vesemir said: "Fu*k it, I won a crossbow in a card game, you should use it".
that and the crossbow is pretty useless in witcher 3
Witchers use bombs though, one would be devastating on enemies regrouping in a gatehouse.
Remeber that Witchers do not use bows or crossbows (only Witcher that use crossbow is Geralt in third part of game and its realllllly small). Most important defence of Kaer Mohren was that is was WITCHERS CASTLE! It was supposed to get rid of enemies just by looking scary.
That worked swimmingly for them then, their castle is a battle-torn ruin and there were three witchers and no next generation at the end of the story.
Kaer Morhen was built by elves. And no, Witchers DO USE BOWS... for hunting for example. I don't see why they wouldn't use them for defense.
They probably would but given that they spent practically all of their time use sword it would explain the lack of inner defenses, once an enemy broke in then the witchers would fight with swords. Normally they won the only time they lost was because of being so heavily out numbered and black magic being used
Well, according to the novels elves did not build castles, only palaces and towers.
Would you be interested in analyzing the various iterations of "Hyrule Castle" from the Zelda series?
Hi Shad,
The "no internal battlements" has a rational component. If the enemy breaches the walls, they can't use your walls as cover, and you can fire on the from inside of the keep. Same reason, some castles had D shaped outer towers, with the back exposed to the keep.
Also, don't discount pure height advantage. Even in modern battles with guns, it can be decisive, it certainly was in the American Civil War.
In the gatehouse, there is a wooden frame. It can be argued that it was some building for defense, and shooting down on people. Also there are some ruined walkway, and archway looking things, so i think it's plausible that the gatehouse defenses were there at some point. You kind of mentioned that :)
Lack of machicholactions: Well, lack of time, money, or both easily explains that :) Lack of murderholes: More of an oversight from the programmers i think, but you are basically right.
Otherwise, good points, and great analysis.
Great vid. However, I'm no expert, but I think the reason some castles don't have inward facing battlements on the outer walls is so that defenders on the (usually higher up) inner walls can easily shoot enemies on the outer walls. It would be really annoying if you had inward facing battlements and when the enemy succeeded in taking them they were able to use them as cover and be on almost equal terms with the defenders of the inner walls, bare in mind the attackers will have superior numbers so this could be disastrous.
That doesn't really make sense. Why design a castle more vulnerable at first, so that you can more easily take it back later? Enemies would be just as open to attack in the courtyard as on battlement-less walls. Your strategy should be to get an early advantage and keep as many of your fighters alive as possible, not to leave them defenseless so that others can more easily kill their killers.
My guess is that both philosophies could work and may both have been used by people with different preferences. Your point is valid in many ways but I think there may be situations where not having inward facing battlements helps. Defender may expect to need to abandon the outer levels sometimes, perhaps because they no longer have enough men to man the outer perimeter (larger area) due to casualties/ illness. Perhaps they could buy time in a siege where the enemy spent weeks undermining part of the outer wall (to make a breach) and once they finished, the defenders could retreated to the inner wall without giving the enemy any battlements to use on the wall they captured. This is just off the top of my head, but I know from reading sources that sieges/ stormings often ended up with attackers capturing one layer and fortifying it without capturing the whole castle until later (if ever)
You could easily make the walls unreachable from the ground of the first two baileys and just set the stairs down on the third and the last one. So that the centre of the defence would be the only way of sending men up the walls.
An important consideration is that, castles aren't just designed around having the perfect defence. People have to be able to live in them and get around them easily as 99.999999% of the time the castle is not under siege. Also, consider that the enemy will get their men onto a captured/ breached wall even without stairs through using ladders or ropes. Basically, there's a time and a place (context) for everything
Dewi Bevan I can see where you're coming from, but people just don't plan in the way that you are thinking.
If you are out-maned, the only way you are going to win is to force the enemy into small areas where you can take them out one-by-one, without being overwhelmed. Keeping them contained to a courtyard is your best bet to win the battle.
Why abandon the initial wall when for a more more fortified one when you can just make the original one more fortified? If you expect to lose part of your defenses, it shouldn't be there in the first place.
Besides, secondary battlements can be made high enough that they can shoot over the inner battlements of previous walls.
Hey Shad, awesome video, thank you so much for doing it. I like to however point out several things you might find interesting. In a design document CPDR say that although they based every single detail of the castle on real castles in Poland, they didn't want to make it too "invincible" since obviously in the past it was captured. Captured by a peasant mob at that. The best part of the defense was the fact that almost nobody knew how to find the castle, not the actual walls. In the first Witcher game, you actually get to see the upper floor of the keep and there are more rooms. (basically all of the shit that is in the main hall was moved down from those rooms when the ceiling collapsed). And one thing I love is that they do have murder holes in the keep I'll attach a link with a picture. Also it's worth noting that the internal layout of the keep does not match the internal one in both games. Very nice video again, congratulations and keep up the good work. Here's a pic of the armory on the upper floor as well as the main corridor
i182.photobucket.com/albums/x262/r3vange/1_zpsziuwljbw.png
i182.photobucket.com/albums/x262/r3vange/2_zps4zvte7n6.jpg
Every time I watch one of these vids, I just picture Shad walking around with a clipboard and leading the main cast of characters around the castle like a tour guide, while the characters are taking notes, making comments and sometimes getting pissed.
Shad, I must say, I love the enthusiasm with which you present alls your videos, but especially the castle reviews. One can really tell you love the subject (as do I) and have a deeper understanding of how medieval castles, weapons and battles worked! A huge thumbs up from my end of the world (where we have many castles - as a matter of fact I was just driving past one you used in the video on the way to my last archery vacation). Keep up the good work and maybe we can have a chat when I am back in OZ (or you are in Europe).
All the best! Rainbow
pls do novigrad, crows perch or the castle on skelige (the name escapes me) I love these vids keep up the great work
leroy shabkebab Kaer Trolde is in Skellige, the seat of the An Craite family.
He should have done one of these instead of Kaer Morhen. Still awesome video
was just about to say kaer trolde, also the reason for doing kaer morhen is that the place that was hyped for about a third of the game
Very curious about Novigrad. There are no port cullis or doors at the gates and the walls dont go all the way around. Would love to hear his opinion on this
As usual love these reviews and I can't wait for the next Castle review. I can just imagine how you'd rip apart some castles/fortified cities from various games, if nothing else seeing you destroy the design of Stormwind City would be amusing to watch since I can already guess at some of it's biggest issues.
I found Shad's one year ago and instantly subscribed and have been watching every video he has put out. Mr. Shad I adore your videos and your wealth of knowledge.
That is a true honour sir, thank you!
These castle reviews are really enjoyable. Keep up the good work man.
Actually some of the closed areas in Kaer Morhen from Witcher 3 are accesible in Witcher 1. Mostly upper floor, iirc and laboratory in basement. But on the other hand, in first Witcher there isn't this bedroom thingy on the right side of castle (this area with two balconies).
ayyy I was really looking forward to this one
And I wasn't disappointed :)
Great videos, mate! Awesomely great! We can't never have enough castle videos.
i really like these castle videos
They do put a dent in some of my fantasies regarding video game battles
But the videos are still awesome
Kaer Throlde and Novigrad?
Crow's Perch would be also nice.
Novigrad is actually a real city in Croatia. There's very little difference in game.
Flskon TheMad I didn't know that. Thanks.
Thanks for Kaer Morhen and loving the series :) Would love to see you analysis some of the other castles / cities in the Witcher series, namely:
Crow's Perch
Novigrad
Kaer Trolde
Oxenfurt
Vizima (Witcher 1)
I am addicted to your videos so much fun and so much knowledge!! :)))
This is the first video that I have seen from you , and instantly I realise you are awesome !
Some, not all, but some of the flaws could be explained in the castle was built and added to over time and designed as a cohesive whole at one time. For instance the gate look like they had once had wooden hording based on the holes.
Review Hyrule Castle. That would be hilarious.
Hey Shad, love the castle analysis videos! I may suggest the castles/fortifications in the Assassin's Creed franchise, I would imagine getting a close look at the castle wouldn't be too much of a hassle because of the parkour element. Keep up the good work!
oh my professor, i just knew you would upload something that is as always excellent
Man I can't wait for Kingdom Come Deliverance to come out just so I can watch another one of your castle reviews.
I really enjoy these videos
Awesome video, would love to see a kind-of drive-by architectural analysis of many of the other keeps in this game, not as thorough but pointing out the highs and lows of them. Would even love to see an analysis of some of the town layout and city defenses as well.
Shad, in the first place many many thanks for making this video bout Kaer Morhen, as a member of your channel I feel listen too. In my option, you made a very distinct line between History and fantasy. THIS channel is the place where Education & Entertainment co-operate, keep this magical formula up and never stop improving it! Thanks for the extra point on the gatehouse (missing doors and murder-holes or arrow gapes), one point where I was very disappointed at the game Dev in the exact same way as described in the video. Maybe the dev where just lacy like they where with the Machicolation.
The improper stone ceiling part is extremely common in games and it bugs me to no end. Once you know to look for it, you'll spot it everywhere. Another common thing are archways that are in a ruined state, impossibly still holding themselves up
To me, it seems like the gatehouse was supposed to have a second floor with a wooden ceiling at the very least. There are some remnants there, so i guess they would also have had murderholes in the floor.
nvm you mentioned that...
There are remains of at least two floors. The top floor probably had a connection with external walls, but you cant't see the door because all of that segment is now a gaping hole.
but they could have a ladder up there but when they attack they raise the ladder
I love your channel! As another comment said, it's basically the essence of what's great about the Internet: education through entertainment
Love your videos! Although, I am very surprised you haven't done a castle review of the Kaer Trolde citadel on Ard Skellig. Which is, by far, my favorite location in the entire game. Because not only can you explore much of the outside, but you can explore a good portion of the interior, too.
I think it may come from the first game, were there was the inner hall and part of the castle, and then they made more designs for the 3th game, were the budget was much higher, but for continually reasons the they decided not to change what was already there... just a guess. also, speaking of the previous games, there is a battle where a castle is taken at the beginning of witcher 2, I would really love to know if it was historical at all xd.
I would love to watch a Malbork/Marienburg castle video.
Great video, loving the whole series. am now going to investigate the actual effectiveness of siege engines because you've got me thinking...
Excellent video Shad 👍🏼
you are missing a couple of details when considering the defenses. This is not a castle for regular humans. At it's prime it would house a small army of witchers. The internal layout allows them to limit how many opponents they fight at a time and slaughter them. The double gate could be improved but once you consider that witchers can use bombs and their enemies can't it is a fire trap. enemy enters the gate, witcher throws a fire bomb and burns them alive.
Your knowledge when it comes to medieval construction is amazing, I love it. However, one thing I feel is being a bit disregarded here is that in the Witcher, magic plays a big factor. This would especially be the case firstly for the elves who originally built the place, as well as when the Witcher school took up residence as they had resident mages. Archery wasn't anywhere near as big a deal for Witchers because mages were able to provide ranged support of their own. They're through the first entrance gate? Time to turn the gatehouse into an inferno., because mages can cast through those portcullises and turn the area into a bloodbath. This may explain the lack of internal crenulation as well, since the walls themselves are meant to be abandoned so mages can continue raining magical artillery into the baileys without risk of collateral damage.
The wall thickness is definitely an issue, but again, this is potentially explained by means of magic (and yeah, I know using magic as an excuse all the time is shitty, but in a fantasy setting like this, it is important). You want to blow up a wall? Enough mages and it'll be pretty much possible regardless of wall thickness. This means that the principle of design would need to be based around slowing an enemy down if they attempted a breach, rather than stopping them entirely, because attempting the latter is likely futile. If we were just looking at assaults using trebuchets and catapults, it'd be a real factor, but it's likely a magically inclined race wouldn't even bother with that. Why waste physical resources when you can just cast a few spells?
Of course if anyone has any counter arguments, that's fantastic, I'd actually love to hear them, but the main point is magic just makes a lot of classic design elements almost unnecessary.
I love how I inquired Shad's opinion on Kaer Morhen a few days before this was published :D Man I laughed my ass off at the bits the devs of Witcher just seemed to forget - I never noticed the lack of arrow slits and murder holes. And the lack of meticulations (is that how you write it?) here and there is plain hilarious, considering they're elseplaces.
You're doing awesome work Shad, thank you.
I absolutely loved this video, never thought someone could point out so much detail simply in the castle design of one game. Honestly despite it's flaws, this video has made me even more impressed with Kaer Morhen and the Witcher 3's world design in general.
I don't claim to have any significant historical knowledge, but I do have two small idea's if anyone wants to humor me.
1) On the meticulations, is it possible the castle use to have meticulations all over but many of them could have been filled in at some point? Kaer Morhen is an extremely old castle that's been through at least two major battles up to the point of Witcher 3. Possibly some of the battlements which had meticulations were at risk of falling down from age/wear and tear and they blocked in the meticulations to try and make them more structurally stable?
2) On the size of the grand hall and it's wasted space. Theoretically if whoever payed to have Kaer Morhen built was rich enough, couldn't they have intentionally wanted a huge grand hall to be more impressive? Wastefulness is certainly another sign of wealth, maybe they wanted whoever entered the castle (invited) to be able to look around this massive room and see all of the murals at once?
I belive they sealed some machicolations to improve game performance.
Do some of the castles in dark souls.
And Eichenwalde from overwatch.
Not sure if there is a real castle in Dark Souls. Maybe Dragonleic Castle in 2, but that one also seems way too large and defenseless to be a castle.
Lothric Castle from DS3.... but yeah, the scale of Dark Souls castles is insane. They were built for giants with bigger egos.... and maybe that's why we find them all in ruin. Nothing to do with fading fire, everything to do with bad defenses?
Srithor
Undead Burg is more of a city.
Anor londo is technically speaking... a castle. and Gwynevere resides inside the keep. also Sen's Fortress is actually kinda of a huge gatehouse, designed by a madgod with a sense of humor, but a gatehouse nonetherless. everything else is the inner city
For those of you who haven't read Mr. Sapkowski's books....do it quickly. His descriptions of Kaer Morhen really help visualise the fortress and make one feel like he's there with the witchers, surviving the cold northern winter, swapping hunting stories and drinking mead.
Can't wait to see your analysis on the castles of kingdom come when it comes out.
Maybe the castle was remodelled and added onto at different time periods, that might be why there aren't meticulations throughout
7:34 I completely lost it
I just recently started watching your channel. you are awesome! keeo up the good work. :)
I love your videos, just for starters, and I haven't actually finished this video yet, but I believe that the primary defense for Kaer Morhen was the nearly inaccessible location. I think you can only get there by following a small hidden trail and it would be nearly impossible to move any sizeable force within range to assault the actual castle itself. Unless you can teleport in haha.
How does this even happen? I just played the witcher 3 for the first time, and was going to suggest you review Kaer Morhen or Kaer Trolde.
iirc Kaer Morhen and Kaer Trolde were suggested already under the Skyhold and/or Whiterun videos :D i'd still like to see Kaer Trolde and maybe Novigrad
ok yeah do kaer throlde !
Kaer Trolde will probably be the best-reviewed one. Central keep located on an isolated, rocky outcropping with a winding mountain path leading to its gatehouse? Good luck besieging that monster.
Kaer Trolde massively wins on location, but could really use a draw bridge thrown in there.
Probably have explosives underneath to blow it in case of emergency.
Thanks for the analysis. I'd love to see you inside of a real and well designed castle if we can ever get enough Patreon support to send you to Europe or Israel.
I dream of this all the time ^_^
I loved this video and how, even putting a lot of attention to detail, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Maybe on the Witcher 4?
Thanks for sharing your knowedge and for teaching us to look from a different angle while enjoying these awesome fantasy universes :)
love these castles vids you do
I think often it's a compromise between historical accuracy and good looks.
I think it's just a stereotype that you have to reach a compromise between these two things. Historically accurate stuff (buildings, weapons, armor, everything) looks far better to an educated eye than made up Holywood-inspired garbage. Practicality is what's actually beautiful.
Not always, but I love it when form follows function and becomes art.
I believed that this was summed up best in the book brisngr "adding that extra inch to the blade would make it less practical, you think it'd make it look better but i think it would make it look ugly."
Because people playing AAA Games are educated in historical warfare.... Jesus are you out of your mind?
I don't know how I haven't found you any earlier.
Hey Shad, love the castle series!
I was wondering if you could do something on the economic aspects of castles and other fortifications throughout history. Maybe with comparions to other types of fortifications that fulfill different functions to housing the ruling class in snug invulnerability?
fantastic i found your video very intresting and educational thank you please keep doing these videos
You should do another Skyrim episode.
This time with the Open Cities Skyrim mod, so that you can see both the inside and outside of the city simultaneously.
Can you review the defensive capabilities of Massada fortress in israel?
also krak de chaveliers how it could be improved
or Mont saint. michelle on how it could be improved
Mont-Saint-Michel is an abbey not a castle.But there's an outer wall with a double layer at its gate.
It has been attacked by the bristish once in the 15/16th century (they used a primitive canon, you can see it in the entrance of the Mont), but the siege failed.
So it"s more like an abbey with a basic but yet effective defense than a real castle (with a lord and an army inside).
Thomas Verdier thx
Massada is a really awesome fortress. Yet the Romans were also really awesome at sieges. Building that massive ramp is a hell of a feat.
Neuschwanstein is beautiful. And it's location seems very good aswell. There's a long path leading up to the hill it sits on. And I love the paintings inside on the walls, especially the one you can see on the picture in your video. It's a rather realistic painting of a forest (I think it was a hunting-scene if I'm not mistaken). You should visit it if you haven't already!
Been a long time since last I swung over your channel and I must say I love these two videos you've done on Skyhold (Of course you'd be playing an knife ear) and Kaer Morhen (Of course you'd go for the plate of the Griffin school).
One thing I do want to say is that you did not mention what role would magic, a force present in both universes, would come to play into both these castles and their defenses. I, for one, can see Witchers in the inner courtyards simply casting Quen to defend against the arrows of their attackers and then just shooting back as they reload. And even that seems unlikely, as it is implied that the School of the Wolf focuses heavily on swordplay and rarely, if ever, employs crossbows or signs to begin with.
Then again, you might be more interested in focusing on the more "real" side of these fictional castles.
The good thing about the Kaer Morhen Valley is that it is littered with fortresses (pretty run down fortresses, sadly) such as the lookout tower and another keep in the same mountain. Maybe you could do a video on those? I personally am very interested in how mere peasants with pitchforks were able to slaughter a fortress full of Witchers. The story of Fyke Isle is very similar, yet I cannot seem to find any historical precedent (As far as Wikipedia is concerned) for such a successful peasant uprising.
Then there's also Tesham Mutna in Toussaint, or Kaer Trolde in Skellige, both of which I believe would be extremely interesting to look at!
Here's my theory: There are 3 possible reasons for the castle walls being so thin:
1. It was a facade, with the lord either cheapening out ("oh, come on, nobody will know it's like that, and nobody uses thebuchets and catapults anymore, not when we're in _this_ possition!")
2. It was built in a hurry, before an attack (possibly having used wooden wals before), so it was incomplete.
3. It was an inside job. The people in charge of building it knew how paper-thin it is, but they wanted to take the castle themselves and/or have the lord die or something.
The back of the walls could easily be filled with dirt packed down really well, eventually with cement water added every so often to turn the packed dirt into actual rocks, if they had the wealth and time to do so, or just build a moat-quarry, to both get stone for the walls and make a moat. So yeah, chances are it was an inside job that didn't end quite as planned...
I like how you pronounce "Neuschwanstein" :-D
What great knowledge thank you for this lovely information
Thank you very much for this video! It somehow reminded me of late castles and Japanese castle design. Could you please make a video on these topics as well? I'd love to hear it!
BTW: I've heard that most churches were painted inside too, but today they are all gray. It's a real pity especially considering that we still have wall paintings surviving from the Roman Empire!
I think you can't apply the same standards to Kaer Morhen as to other castles in some areas, simply because it is not the residence of any lord with a family and servants and the like, but the headquarters of the witchers (or at least the Wolf School). Correct my if I'm wrong, I'm not familiar with the books, but I don't think the witchers ever had servants nor regularly entertained guest nor had the need for a formal dining room, so the Great Hall for example would be used in numerous ways by the witchers living there, maybe comparted into smaller areas.
Great video considering everything else :)
Wolfsgeist I dont think it ALWAYS was the home of the Witchers
I'm pretty sure the witchers built kaer morhen
It was originally built by the elves and I don't believe the elves would have built it specifically for the Witchers, they built it to be a castle for themselves. If, hypothetically, The Witcher universe was real, then it is likely the castle would be a lot more practical.
Bartosz N
the school of the wolf trained witchers in the kaer morhen valley long before the fortress was around. theres a cave nearby with a wolfs head carved into the stone at the entrance where the first trials of the grasses were performed
The elves did not build castles according to the books, only towers and palaces.
I really hope you do the cities of Oblivion next. The cities of Oblivion are actually very well made. The Imperial city is in particular darn near impenetrable despite being able to approach the main wall from any angle. Though there's one missed opportunity I just know you'll hammer on :P
I wonder, how cold does it get in cyrodiil in the winter? Would the lake ever freeze over solidly enough for attackers to bypass the bridge?
ActionCow Oh certainly not that cold. And I would certainly not try to move a siege tower or ram or catapult across it if it did freeze in a peculiarly cold winter.
Incidentally, if the design was fully realized, the city would be ridiculous to try and take as there are a number of gates along the bridge. And if the design seen in the intro vid was realized...goodness, SEVEN gates to breech on the bridge before you even reach the island to start properly assaulting the city
Sorry to disappoint, but if Imperial City would exist in real world, it could have been taken without so much as breaking a sweat. If you watch more videos on proper castle design you'll see that IC breaks almost all of them, just having three layers of walls is not even close to proper security. Same goes from every city in Oblivion and Skyrim: no farmlands to sustain siege, no gatehouses with proper murderholes, no twisted road for the attackers, no drawbridges, etc. And if you add the fact that this is fantasy we're talking about and people have magic to help them defend we should be seeing a lot of creative uses of it, but we never do. Nontheless the best design in a game would go to La Valette Castle from Witcher II or Novigrad. However I would like to see a game where a city is protected by magic as well as historical methods.
Zygmunt Ledzion What makes the IC almost impossible to take is that if the design was full realized - and that's important cause the game model is not - you have to take numerous gates on the main bridge to get to the island and that would be a huge pain. And the walls are extremely high and appear to be solid stone which means you are going to have one heck of a time breaching it.
The lack of farm land is a limitation of the game engine at the time, that many NPCs, folliage meshes, and LOD would have been an unsustainable strain.
The biggest violation of security design in the IC is actually one you completely failed to mention: the number of interior gates. Every district being gated and isolated is good. Every district having a gate to the center is not good. Ideally, the IC should have only one gate to the center and you should be forced to take all the districts to reach it. And the Imperial Prison and Arcane University both serve as supporting fortresses.
Also, the gatehouse bit is impossible to judge since the game uses loading transitions. However, some do look like gatehouses.
And to go back to the farmland bit, just to further prove my point the area surrounding the lake the Imperial Isle is situated in is constantly referred to as farmland. So again, the depiction is a matter of game engine limitations. If the IC's design were fully realized as described, it would be a very, very tough nut to crack.
I believe the reason every district has a gate to the Green Emperor Way is to make it easier to access for the player.
I think it is quite possible to explain most of what you are saying.
The castle has been demolished by a siege and never repaired correctly due to lack of resources, both material and human. Since inner gates were probably demolished during the siege and repaired probably by returning witchers only, they might not have been able to build good matriculations (is this the right word?) above the new gates. Other matriculations might have been covered during some energency low cost reconstruction (I assume such "hole in the wall" doesn´t help the strength of it). Also they were lacking enough people to defend walls after the break-through, so maybe they decided for the strategy "once there is a break-through, we all go into more inner layer" and therefore they wanted to be able to shoot at everybody, therefore there are no inner battlements. Note inner layers are above outer ones, so it makes sense you want there no cover. Note also these walls are really not in a good shape. Maybe they just decided to repair outer battlements only? Also doors to the second floor in the main gate might have been lost during some emergency repaires after the destruction of this floor. The main hall might have another wooden floor, too, and I assume there used to be more rooms, but with only a few witchers living in, they probably decided to just remove those walls when they were about to fall. Possibly modular design was original intention as the original architect wasn´t sure about specifics of a witchers keep.
And thin walls... might have been magically strenghtened, or the original project was simply too ambitious? It really looks way too big for a keep of some order in the wilderness. They might have started building a huge castle then money became problem, so they decided to build it cheeply... also they might expect to be able to destroy enemy trebuchets by their own, given the height advantage.
And generally, we should not assume that everything worked well during middle age or fantasy with this technological level. Maybe stupidity arised, one group of workers didn´t communicate with others and generally they just made a crap.
Well I remember in the first witcher game there was this room with weapon raks and chests, there were also a pait of kettle and there were two slits on the ground right near them to spill boiling oild through, and because of that I always thought I was in the gate house except no because im still in the keep.The game called that room the armoury if I remember correctly.
Can you do an episode on the Alamo, and how it was so flawed in its design. In U.S. History they never go over the details of the fortress, just that it was easily taken over by both sides, and the battle that took place there . I've always been curious of how a stronghold could be so bad at its job.
I know it's way more modern that your usual 15th-16th era castles that you normally do, but I think it would make a nice "break from the usual" type episode. Normally you give critiques on castles in games, or in the real world, but those are usually well designed/fortified. The Alamo was laughable, and I would love to have a laugh about it with you.
... Because it wasn't a fortress. It was some old buildings (a churchyard I think) that some people hastily fortified. Google.
it was a mission, meant to fend off raids from native tribes not a contemporary army
sparrow , is this the castle that hassan i sabbah occupied?
" In U.S. History they never go over the details of the fortress" because it's irrelevant. It's not even a significant event in U.S. history. If it had never happened, history would be pretty much the same, except without Texans worshiping some guy wearing a dead raccoon on his head. It's just another one of those little things blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes.
"It's not even a significant event in U.S. history."
It is a significant event in in Texas' path for independence which later lead it to becoming apart of the U.S. so you are wrong.
"If it had never happened, history would be pretty much the same, except without Texans worshiping some guy wearing a dead raccoon on his head."
well since Texans don't worship Davy Crockett now you are wrong again.
"It's just another one of those little things blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes."
I dont really see how its blown out of proportion or how it contributes to any sort of propaganda.
Can you do imperial city from elder scrolls oblivion
Kaer Morhen's gatehouse does have a series of covered up somethings (the brickwork looks like it's covering a hole in the wall) all through it which look like they were for murder holes or arrow slits. They were probably just fixed up to avoid causing structural problems in a collapsing castle, or were edited out to save on development time. Either or I guess.